ught it was
too bad to take out the horses. He is tired, too, after his journey.
Is it half-past eleven? Everybody is lazy on Sunday morning. But there
will be an hour or two before lunch yet. I have brought our friend
`Jeanie.' There will be time for a chapter or two."

Christie looked up with an expression of surprise and doubt on her face.

"Jeanie Deans, is it? But it is the Sabbath-day!"

Miss Gertrude laughed.

"Well, what if it is? I'm sure there is no harm in the book. You
looked exactly like Aunt Barbara when you said that; I mean, all but her
cap and spectacles. `The moral expression' of your face, as she would
say, was exactly the same."

Christie laughed, but said nothing.

"You don't mean to tell me that there is any harm in the book?"
continued Miss Gertrude.

"It is not a right book for the Sabbath, though," said Christie,
gravely.

"Well, for my part, I don't see that a book that it is right to read
every other day of the week can be so very bad a book for Sunday," said
Miss Gertrude; sharply.

Christie made no reply.

"I declare, I like Aunt Barbara's way best; to call all tales wicked at
once, and have nothing to do with them--these vile novels, as she calls
them. Come, now, you are not in earnest?"

"I am quite in earnest," said Christie, gently, but firmly.

"And you have been reading or listening to this, or something like it,
all the week! Well, that is what I should call straining at a gnat and
swallowing a camel."

"Well, perhaps it is. I never thought about it in that way before. But
I am sure it is not right to read such books on the Sabbath-day. And
perhaps it is wrong to read them at all--at least, so many of them as we
have been reading. I almost think it is."

She spoke sorrowfully, but not in any degree offensively. Indeed, she
seemed to be speaking rather to herself than to Miss Gertrude. Yet the
young lady was offended. Assuming the tone and manner with which she
sometimes made herself disagreeable, she said:

"I should regret exceedingly to be the means of leading you to do
anything that you think wrong. I must try and enjoy my book by myself."
And without looking towards her, she walked out of the room.

For a little while Christie sat motionless, gazing at the door through
which she had disappeared, and thinking sorrowfully that this was a very
sad ending to a very pleasant time. But there was a sharper pain at her
heart than any that this thou